


Episode 60: A Drunk's Joke

by PitoyaPTx



Series: Clan Meso'a [60]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Mandalorian, Mandalorian Clan, Mandalorian Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:07:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24372523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PitoyaPTx/pseuds/PitoyaPTx
Summary: "And here you thought I didn't care." ~NiriIt's hard to not acquire friends when you are part of a culture based upon camaraderie. Doesn't mean you like them, but you're still friends...right?
Series: Clan Meso'a [60]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1261364
Kudos: 1





	Episode 60: A Drunk's Joke

Evening had fallen on the foothills and it was late enough that the cantina was mostly empty, save a few insomniacs and the barman’s oldest son who often took the night shifts. He’d just started putting up chairs at empty tables when Tam came in. When he spotted her he gave her a warm salute; she smiled and patted his shoulder as she passed, hugging her shawl tight against her and shuffling by empty table after table toward a lonely figure near the back.  
“You didn’t see them off?” Tam asked, pushing a chair to the table.  
Niri sighed and shook her head, taking a swig of her whiskey, “I’m a busy woman.”  
The Mirialan raised an eyebrow, stretching the wrinkles on her lid, “Busy or,” she gestured to the bottle, “Distracted?”  
The Zabrak cackled, partially sputtering alcohol onto her light grey chest plate, “No no, I only started drinking an hour ago. I just didn’t have the time. You know my project? Got big plans coming in from up top.” She pointed to the ceiling and grinned, “They've only been saying that for two years now. This time, it’s the truth, right?”  
Tam frowned in disgust as Niri burped and took another swig. “You know, Niri, I imagined the first Spar I’d meet to be a bit more-”  
“Like Avrida?” Niri rolled her eyes, “Yeah well the old bat had a reputation. Sorry to disappoint.”  
“You certainly have her pension for mind altering vices.”  
Niri wagged a finger, “No no no, Avrida was a smoker, I,” she raised the bottle, “am a drinker.”  
“I can see that.”  
“What do you want, Tam?”  
Baba Tam shook her head again, “Nothing, just… sometimes wonder what Aviila sees in you. She risks her life. You drink.”  
Niri coughed into the back of her hand, “It’s not exactly a cake walk knowing she’s out there.”  
“A cake walk?”  
Niri rolled her eyes, “A cake walk? Walking on cake or something, kriff Tam you retired too early.”  
Tam sighed; Niri took a long draft and finished the bottle, setting it down on the table with a hard thud. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and pushed out her chair.  
“I’ll make it up to her later,” she shrugged, collected the bottle, and stood up, “I’ll holo her or something I don’t know she’s a grown ass woman she’ll be fine.”  
“And will you?” Tam called after her.  
Niri made a rude gesture and backed out of the cantina. 

The bottle clinked against the other contents of the rubbish bin with an echo that made her ears ring. She swore again and stuck a finger in her left ear until the painful vibration in her cranium ceased. It was par for the course, she guessed as the looming stress of imaginary deadlines paraded through her head like a carnival in full swing. That’s what Meso’kaan needs, she cackled internally, a good show or just something to loosen everyone up. Might do them some good. She shook her head. They’d never be down for that sort of thing. They had their own fairs, their own festivals, their own way of doing things. Stubborn fools. Well..that wasn’t fair. It was tradition. Mandalorians and their traditions… She sighed. Tradition was what brought her here. Not her own tradition but someone else’s... For a moment she paused in the middle of the street. What was she doing here? A cool breeze swept down the mountain and found every minuscule gap in her armor; she shivered. What a lovely location, she grimaced. Who would want to live next to a mountain?  
“Fuck,” she groaned, smushing her palms against her face and dragging them down her cheeks, “Aviila’s gone for six hours and you’re already complaining, di’kut.”  
The alleyways between streets were just dark enough that she narrowly missed tripping over stray crates and the occasional pile of Ka’kex decorations. Making matters worse was how quickly her body was cycling out the alcohol. She’d need a refresher soon, but didn’t want to stop before she made it home. Luckily home was only a few alleyways from the cantina, two from Aviila’s to be exact. It was located midway between the center of the village and the eastern training arena. Though it was far enough that she didn’t have to hear the morning training exercises, it was still close enough to warrant sleeping with earplugs. The sound of clawed shoes on cobblestone was enough to drive her morning hangovers through the roof. To be fair, she thought to herself, I don’t always have to drink every night. Back home, her real home, she wasn’t like this. At least, the booze wasn’t so strong you’d lose your head after a single bottle. Something about the way the Meso’a make it… either they really wanted to forget something or she still wasn’t used to it. That could be the case, she thought, there are a lot of things she still wasn’t used to. Namely, she gestured to no one as she ducked under a low hanging awning, how fatalistic everyone is. When she was allowed to have a home, a real home, the first thing she noticed was the helmet-size cut-outs in her wall. Each home, she discovered, came with a place to put the helmet of your dead loved one. That was enough to wig her out and she decided to ditch the house to live in her shop. It worked out, as some family got her home and she could focus on her work seeing as it was only a few feet below her loft.  
“Speaking of which,” she muttered to herself as she punched into the code for the garage door, “I should-”  
“Su cuy, Niri!” said a deep voice from behind her.  
She paused before she hit the last number, “Madra’gaxan? To what do I owe the pleasure?”  
The yellow light from the lamp above the garage made his deep orange skin look sickly pale like a specter barely visible in the moonlight. Not that it mattered. Madra’gaxan was one of the tribe’s firefighters, a Ka’saak. Between the insulated armor and what Nirir guessed was the actual size of his muscles, he looked intimidating no matter the time of day. Not that she’d studied him or anything but her garage caught on fire a few years ago and he was the first one on the scene. Turns out he lived at the bottom of the street and his nephew was still a trainee. The fire didn’t make them friends necessarily, but they were neighborly. He was a Zabrak, she was a Zabrak. That’s about all they had in common other than the fire, and truth be told she wanted to keep it that way.  
He gestured to the junky speeder beside him, “I’ll be gone for a few days. Can I leave this with you?”  
She looked down at it and scoffed, “I guess so. I can always use scrap parts.”  
He chuckled, “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? But no, I need the whole system overhauled. It keeps pitching to the left and backfires when I make sharp turns.”  
“That’s,” she said, looking it over, “kinda impressive. What did you do?”  
He shrugged.  
“Great,” she shook her head, “leave it to a Ka’saak to kriff up a perfectly good speeder.”  
He crossed his arms, “Can you fix it or not?”  
“Years of detailing specialty droids and luxury cruiser hyperdrives wasted on a speeder,” she muttered, pulling a flashlight out of a side pouch and peering between the mass of pipes and gears surrounding the fuel tank, “When are you coming back?”  
“Not sure,” he said, pretending her hadn’t heard her complaining, “But I figure if anyone can fix it, you can.”  
“Don’t try to flatter me, I give myself better compliments every day.”  
At that, he gave a genuine half laugh and nudged her with his knee. “Hey, is it true that the kid was an Ordo?”  
Niri, having set the flashlight in her mouth and stuck her hand up under the tank, spit it out onto her lap. “The kid? You mean Cara?”  
He nodded.  
“Mm,” she hummed, grimacing as she took hold of the underside of the gear shaft and gave it a twist, turning the handlebars slightly, “It’s a bit more complicated than that.”  
“How so?”  
“They don’t pay me enough to know those things.”  
“I get it,” he put up his hands, “I was just curious. Would have loved to talk to her.”  
“Yeah?”  
“Yeah.”  
She looked up at him, “Why?”  
He shrugged again, “Well wouldn’t she have come of age? She would know their traditions, their fighting style.”  
Niri chuckled and extricated her arm now smudged up past her wrist with dark grease, “Cara was never one of them. She just knew them. Weren’t you watching the broadcast?”  
“I was prepping for my trip.”  
“I’m starting to realize why they call you Madra’di’kut.”  
He rolled his eyes. “And how drunk are you?”  
“Not enough for this shit,” she snapped, getting to her feet and wiping her hands on her kama, “I can fix it fine but it’ll have to stay with me for a few weeks.”  
“That’s fine,” he said, rolling his shoulders, “I’ll be gone for a while.”  
“Oh yeah? Where?”  
“They don’t pay you enough to know.” 

“They don’t pay you enough to know,” she mimicked him, sliding his speeder into the garage, “Madra’di’kut. I hope you take a sip of ka’hast a find it’s only partially stirred.”  
She paused and cackled. That was a good one. She’d have to tell Aviila when she got back.  
“Partially stirred,” she laughed, “Ah, Niri you need sleep…”


End file.
